1888: The Louisiana Lottery was a controversial private venture

The Louisiana state lottery was a controversial private venture whose machinations helped develop the state's enduring reputation for corruption. It was given a 25-year charter by the Legislature in 1868, in exchange for a $40,000 payment and thousands more in bribes.

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Charles T. Howard was sent by a Kentucky company to Lousiana with $50,000 to obtain a lottery charter. Once he got it by spreading that money around the Legislature, he got local partners and double-crossed his company. He became one of the most powerful and corrupt men in Louisiana.

The high-society Metairie Jockey Club denied him membership. So when the their Metairie Race Course ran into trouble some years later, he bought it and turned it into a cemetery. His tomb sits in the middle of Metairie Cemetery.

Lottery chief Howard hired two former Confederate generals, Jubal Early and P.G.T. Beauregard, to supervise the drawings. They sat on a stage with a large cylinder that was filled with capsules containing numbers. Every so often, two boys would pull out capsules from the container and hand them to Beauregard or Early. After checking the numbers, young ladies dressed in hoop skirts posted the numbers on a large board for the audience to see.

Tickets were sold across the United States, and thousands of sales receipts were sent to New Orleans. Special trains were needed for the volume of mail. Yearly sales were secret, but some estimates put them above $20 million, with millions of dollars in profits for the insiders. The company helped its odds. If it failed to sell all of its tickets before the drawings, the unsold tickets were placed into the barrel, enabling the company, in many instances, to win its own prize money.

The lottery was headquartered on St. Charles Avenue at the corner of Union Street. The building is now gone. Ninety percent of the tickets were sold outside of Louisiana. Drawings were held weekly, monthly and semi-annually, and ticket prices increased with the size of the prize.

Newspapers benefited from advertising and, except for the New Delta, were slow to take up the anti-lottery cause. One of the last to oppose the lottery was The Daily Picayune, because publisher Eliza Nicholson was friends with John Morris, one of the promoters. Business and religious quarters were angry at the highhanded tactics and bribery used to get the constitutional protection for the lottery. Voters defeated the amendment
at the ballot box. Then the federal government stepped in and banned sending tickets by mail. The lottery was doomed.

As its charter came up for renewal, lottery officials strong-armed the Legislature into enshrining the lottery into the state Constitution in 1890. But business and religious quarters were angry at the highhanded tactics and bribery used to get the constitutional protection for the lottery. Outraged voters defeated the lottery amendment at the ballot box. Then the federal government stepped in and banned sending tickets by mail. The lottery was doomed.